Dorothy J. Hale

My research focuses on two related fields: the Anglo-American novel, especially from 1875 to the present, and the theory of the novel, which develops into its own discipline during this period. I am particularly interested in problems of novelistic form. For my work on point of view, voice, narrative, and the politics of form, see Social Formalism: The Novel in Theory from Henry James to the Present (Stanford UP, 1998) and The Novel: An Anthology of Criticism and Theory, 1900-2000 (Wiley-Blackwell, 2006).

Recent articles related to my current book project, The Novel and the New Ethics, include "On Beauty as Beautiful?The Problem of Novelistic Aesthetics by way of Zadie Smith" (Contemporary Literature, 2012); "Aesthetics and the New Ethics: Theorizing the Novel in the Twenty-first Century" (PMLA, 2009); "The Art of English Fiction in the Twentieth Century" (The Cambridge Companion to the Twentieth-Century English Novel, 2009); "Fiction as Restriction: Self-Binding in New Ethical Theories of the Novel" (Narrative, 2007).

Other recent projects include "Faulkner's Light in August and New Theories of Novelistic Time" in A Question of Time, ed. Cindy Weinstein, Cambridge UP (forthcoming November 2018) and "The Place of the Novel in Reparative Reading," forthcoming in Studies in the Novel, special anniversay issue.

The Novel: An Anthology of Criticism and Theory 1900-2000
The Novel: An Anthology of Criticism and Theory 1900–2000 is a collection of the most influential writings on the theory of the novel from the twentieth century. Traces the rise of novel theory and the extension of its influence into other disciplines, especially social, cultural and political theory. Broad in scope, including sections on formalism; the Chicago School; structuralism and narr....